June 2009
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On July 9th we will be returning to St James' Piccadilly for our fourth annual Summer Serenade concert. The concert will feature the world premiere of a new arrangement for strings of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition by our music director, Jacques Cohen, alongside works by Vaughan Williams and Elgar. Originally composed for piano in 1874, there have been many orchestrations of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition including that for brass, wind, organ and even accordion, but to our knowledge, this is the first arrangement for strings. Mussorgsky wrote the piece following the posthumous exhibition of over 400 works of art by his friend Viktor Hartmann, arranged after the artist's death in 1873. The music depicts an imaginary tour of the the collection with titles of individual movements alluding to particular canvases. This popular piece is multi-faceted, depicting humour, tragedy and a sense of the macabre. Following the tradition of conductors such as Stokowski, who regularly wrote arrangements for their orchestras, Jacques has written this arrangement to exploit the outstanding virtuosity of the players in the Isis Ensemble. He says: "Some people doubt that a string orchestra the size of the Isis Ensemble can sound 'big' enough to pull off a piece like this. However, the genius who composed this piece originally conceived it for just one instrument - the piano. With a string orchestra the calibre of the Isis Ensemble, the variety of colours, characters and textures that can be achieved is truly astonishing, as anyone who has heard us can attest." The concert will also feature Elgar's popular Summer Serenade and Vaughan Williams' delightful Oboe Concerto - a pastoral evocation of the traditional English landscape. Outstanding oboist Emily Pailthorpe will perform the solo. As well as the Isis Ensemble, Emily is a member of the London Conchord Ensemble. A graduate of Yale University and the Juilliard School of Music, she moved to the UK in 2000 and has been in great demand as a guest principal oboist since, appearing with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, English National Opera and BBC Scottish among others. For further details and ticket information about the concert, please click here.
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